6 Rare and Unique Eye Colors | eyeXam Optometry (2024)

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6 Rare and Unique Eye Colors | eyeXam Optometry? ›

The iris has pigmentation that determines the eye color. Irises are classified as being one of six colors: amber, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel, or red. Often confused with hazel eyes, amber eyes tend to be a solid golden or copper color without flecks of blue or green typical of hazel eyes.

The iris has pigmentation that determines the eye color. Irises are classified as being one of six colors: amber, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel, or red. Often confused with hazel eyes, amber eyes tend to be a solid golden or copper color without flecks of blue or green typical of hazel eyes.

Violet and red are unique eye colors caused by an iris with little to no pigment. When light reflects off of the blood vessels in eyes that lack typical pigmentation, the eyes appear violet or red. Astonishing as it may seem, these eye colors occur naturally—and are extremely rare.

Did Elizabeth Taylor have violet eyes? These days, thanks to colored contact lenses, anyone can have violet-colored eyes . Taylor didn't come by her purple peepers that way; the first tinted contact lenses weren't commercially available until 1983. Taylor's eye color was the real deal.

Red and violet

Although the deep blue eyes of some people such as Elizabeth Taylor can appear purple or violet at certain times, "true" violet-colored eyes occur only due to albinism. Eyes that appear red or violet under certain conditions due to albinism are less than 1 percent of the world's population.

When broken down by gender, men ranked gray, blue, and green eyes as the most attractive, while women said they were most attracted to green, hazel, and gray eyes. Despite brown eyes ranking at the bottom of our perceived attraction scale, approximately 79% of the world's population sports melanin-rich brown eyes.

Turquoise eyes

Turquoise eyes are a rare, bright blue-green color that is caused by the combination of blue scattering of light by the iris and yellow color of the epithelium. They are rare and are often found in people of Middle Eastern and North African descent.

According to an article by evolutionary biology professor Mark Elgar, PhD, of the University of Melbourne, blue-eyed redheads are the absolute rarest, with 0.17% of the population having that combination of hair and eye color. So if that describes you, you're most likely one in a million—or more!

The 'Rarest' Eye Color

Only 2 percent of people have green eyes, "making it the rarest eye color, " Wong said in another post on Instagram in December. Boparai told Newsweek in February that the rarity of green eyes varies across the globe. In Europe, they're found in around 8 percent of the population.

Red/Pink Eyes

Two major conditions cause a red or pinkish eye color: albinism and blood leaking into the iris. Although albinos tend to have very, very light blue eyes due to a lack of pigment, some forms of albinism can cause eyes to appear red or pink. Amber eyes are a beautiful honey color!

What famous person has violet eyes? ›

Elizabeth Taylor, A beautiful and great color photo, emphasizes her great violet eyes.

Magical Purple Eyes Are Real and Beautiful

Purple eyes are very real — and extremely rare. They usually occur in people with albinism, who have very little melanin in their eyes. The combination of pink from visible blood vessels and reflected blue light creates a beautiful violet color.

You guessed it, Taylor had twice as many eyelashes as most of the actresses of her day. In her case, it played to her advantage later in life. While she was one of the lucky ones who enjoyed benefits to her twin set of lashes, the medical condition we now know as distichiasis isn't so nice for some people.

While some people may appear to have irises that are black, they don't technically exist. People with black-colored eyes instead have very dark brown eyes that are almost indistinguishable from the pupil. In fact, brown eyes are even the most common eye color in newborn babies.

Although lighting conditions can allow the blood vessels at the back of the eye to be seen, which can cause the eyes to look reddish or violet, most people with albinism have blue eyes, and some have hazel or brown eyes.

The primary colors in additive color mixing are red, green, and blue, commonly known as RGB. These primary colors can be combined to create secondary colors: yellow, magenta, and cyan. Subtractive color mixing involves combining different colored pigments or dyes to create a new color.

10 Brown eye color is a dominant trait and blue eye color is a recessive trait. Green eye color is a mix of both. Green is recessive to brown but dominant to blue. Other genes that help determine eye, skin, and hair color include the genes ASIP, IRF4, SLC24A4, SLC24A5, SLC45A2, TPCN2, TYR, and TYRP1.